Poster Boy
by sometime north of reality
Summary: Anakin Skywalker wasn't a hero.


**Star Wars Stuff:** This isn't meant to bash Anakin, but it does look at his flaws and relationships. No flames please, people who love Anakin as much as I love Obi-wan. I prefer to avoid internet versions of Mustafar. (But feel free to just review about your undying love for Obi-wan. He deserves it.) (Also Star Wars is not one of my regular fandoms, so I hope you can forgive any gaps in my knowledge of it.)

 **Other Fanfiction Stuff:** I know. Wrong story to update. I'm sorry.

 **Disclaimer:** Padme died of a broken heart? Really? Clearly I don't own Star Wars.

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 **Poster Boy**

When he was nine years old, Anakin Skywalker was a slave.

He felt the small detonator chip that marked him as property - that denied his humanity - not as the inescapable weight that crushed others in his position, but as an irritation. It grated against the edge of his consciousness. _Slave._ He scratched at the skin under which it hid in anticipation of the day when he would grow powerful enough to rip it out. He never doubted that this day would come; he knew that he was special, special enough to free everyone.

This belief did not make him a bad person. He was special, but so too was everyone he met. He saw an angel where others would overlook a queen, a chance to help a hero where others would see a reckless bet and a hopeless race, and the most wonderful woman in the galaxy where even she felt a worn-down slave stood.

He might have been a hero if he ever learned the difference between wanting to free everyone and wanting everyone to be free.

Of course, he left Tatooine without saving anyone. He was only a child, his fate left in the hands adults who saw how special he was - Qui-gon who believed he was Chosen, and Shmi who knew that he was meant for better things, and was willing to be the one left behind if that's what it took to save him. Anakin spent the rest of his life looking for someone to replace their love.

He did not find what he was looking for in the Jedi Order.

When he became a Jedi, Anakin Skywalker was the Chosen One.

The Jedi Council did not believe in him at first, did not share the faith in him that Qui-gon had. They called him too old. They _doubted_ him. Perhaps, he should have blamed them for making a child afraid for his future, but it was this doubt that forever drove a wedge between him and the Jedi Council.

He never forgave Obi-wan either. Yes, Obi-wan fought to take him as Padawan and would have left the Order for him had he ever been sent away, but Obi-wan's initial, jealousy- or premonition-inspired doubt slowly poisoned their relationship for decades.

Palpatine was the only one on Coruscant who never doubted Anakin's potential. Even as Obi-wan did his best to nurture it, Palpatine nurtured Anakin's belief in it. There was nothing he couldn't do. If the Jedi said otherwise, they were jealous, short-sighted, limiting.

The Chosen One, once the boy who knew he would be powerful enough to free the slaves, listened and believed.

This belief did not make him a bad person. He saw people suffering and felt the Jedi Order's callousness when they walked away in the name of the "greater good." He _cared_. They didn't. They told him that he was Chosen, but didn't trust him; they tried to make him conform, but did not truly allow him to be one of them. They turned away, and for support, left him only a young and grieving master. Their failures drove him to his.

He might have been a hero, if he had learned that some failure was inevitable.

Instead, when he saw his limitations first-hand as his mother died in his arms, he committed genocide for the first time.

He killed the Tuskens, and Padme saw him as a tragic hero. She saw that what he had done came from a place of grief and pain and believed that her love could heal him. In her, he seemed to have found the unconditional faith he craved.

He never told Obi-wan.

When he became a General, Anakin Skywalker was the poster boy of the Republic.

He and Obi-wan were The Team. The Hero with No Fear and The Negotiator. They got along better once the word "Master" no longer lay between them.

He loved Obi-wan with fierce possessiveness and playful banter. He saved his life on Geonosis and again when Palpatine would have left him behind on a crashing ship. Obi-wan was his, and Anakin would be strong enough to protect everyone who was his.

Of course, they still fought. Obi-wan's devotion would never be expressive enough for his former Padawan. He was private, reserved, quietly dedicated to the Code and the Force, and Anakin resented him for his unfeeling demeanor. Anakin didn't know that he voiced his complaints at the same time that the Council criticized his mentor for excessive attachment. He only occasionally noticed that he was loved.

Obi-wan failed Anakin too. He failed to notice Anakin's anger until it exploded, and he failed to see the hurt caused by his distinctions between his role as Council member and friend. The Councillor faked his own death for an undercover mission and asked Anakin to spy on Palpatine against his better judgement. It was his duty. The friend hid his pain, his doubts about the war, and his conflicts with the Jedi Council. He didn't want to let Anakin down by showing weakness - not after he'd already failed Qui-gon.

Anakin read only betrayal and lack of trust from the line between love and duty.

The entire Jedi order betrayed him when Ahsoka Tano walked away. She was his Snips and he was her Skyguy, and he hadn't wanted a Padawan, but Force how he loved her. He loved her and she walked away.

He tried to understand. He knew that she had been betrayed by the Jedi when they handed her over to the Republic for execution, and he blamed the Jedi Council for that. He blamed Obi-wan for failing to save her.

And some part of him blamed her for leaving. He wouldn't have let her be hurt, if she'd stayed, if she'd trusted him, if she hadn't found a different path.

He might have been a hero, if he'd thought to walk it with her.

He was adored by the Republic, by Palpatine, by Padme, but the Jedi turned away from him even as they used him. He was their Chosen One, a general, the master of a Padawan, and eventually a Council member, but they never trusted him. They never made him a Master.

His resentment did not make him a bad person. He was at war and he was lost. He was manipulated and used, the poster boy and the scapegoat. He was the Hero with No Fear, and he was so afraid.

He was so alone. The people who loved him didn't seem to trust him, and the people who trusted him wanted to use him. Even the ones who loved him wanted that. Padme. Obi-wan. And just as surely as he once knew he could save everyone, he knew that he could lose them both.

Unless he became strong enough to save everyone.

When he Fell, Anakin Skywalker was Darth Vader.

To save Padme, he committed genocide for the second time, against his own. Or perhaps not. Perhaps he owed the Jedi Order nothing - perhaps they never truly cared for him, never believed in him - but the Initiate who came out of hiding to ask for help came because he trusted the Hero with No Fear. This child gave Anakin the faith he had always craved, and Anakin cut him down with a lightsaber.

He betrayed everything Padme stood for, and still, she came to him on Mustafar. She asked only for his love, was ready to leave with him as he had not with Ahsoka. He offered more death and power over the galaxy instead. Then he killed her.

He had a part in the death of everyone Obi-wan cared about, and still his former Master asked him not to make that final jump. He jumped anway, and Obi-wan cut off his limbs and left him for dead in his last show of love versus duty.

Anakin burned.

He was encased in black, made to be as much machine as man.

And then he became the poster boy for the Empire and for the man who orchestrated everything.

We would never have believed that Darth Vader could be a hero if Luke hadn't learned a lesson Anakin Skywalker never did: We can be hurt by those we love, and we can forgive.


End file.
